I am in the process of re-organizing all of my teacher resources for the calculus, statistics, and introduction to software/hardware classes I have taught over the years (and others). Each of these links point to a directory with resources I have developed over the years and will continue to update as I move forward. I post these here to share with fellow educators who may…
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Today, I am sharing a pedagogical strategy I use to learn mathematics with students. The learning technique is called Inquirer Presenter Scribe. The video presentation attached in this post is both an overview to the routine, and includes a small, scaled down, model implementation of the technique with volunteer students/colleagues. This technique was developed on an presented many years prior (2013), and this particular post…
I recently applied for the Ed.D. program at UNM. I was asked to write about my educational beliefs, or positions rather, and to specifically focus on how I would meet the needs of Education given what are often conflicting and differing demands. I am planning a position paper on education, and although this article was somewhat restricted in its focus, there are some ideas I…
Mathematics requires higher order conceptual and analytical skills, therefore, it is often difficult to completely forego direct instruction or essential skills practice. For this reason, I developed three strategies to assist students in acquiring rigorous mathematical content at the expense of an instructor as an explicit pedagogue, in favor of the instructor as a nurturer, or participant in the process of paideia. In order the…
In my final year at Santa Fe High School in 2015, the Innovation Academy that I was a part of … called on teachers to think outside the box on how to teach mathematics content. One topic that I always found interesting was how to leverage math concepts as allegory and/or satire of world events, for example, like Sir Edward Abbot Abbot’s Flatland. Flatland was…
In the fall of 2013 and 2014, Santa Fe High School (where I taught math) piloted a ‘bridge program’ which was designed to assist incoming Freshmen make the transition to high school more smoothly. The events were each 1 week long, and they occurred the week prior to school starting, i.e., a voluntary bridge program for students to warm up to high school learning culture.…
The following handwritten notes document my thinking about error bounds generally and the remainder estimation theorem for Infinite Series. The primary take away from this exercise is that bounding error in modern Calculus courses involves a mix of technology and classical methods. When the bound is determined, teachers often encourage students to use a calculator-determined limit, instead of classically determining the limit from means available…
I got this activity at an AVID training in 2010 or so (Cynthia Sanchez was the trainer) and later adapted it to my classes at Santa Fe High School from 2011 to 2015. Basically, it is a team builder for the start of the year where you both create an art piece and leverage the art piece to symbolize scholastic goals. I have included my…
The students were given a task, during the last month of AB and/or AB/BC Calc to create a media and/or visual arts based representation of their experience in the class to that point. Here is what they created. Not all submissions are included here, partially because I only have master recordings (instead of the live take / recordings) of only some, so patience. If you…
Santa Fe New Mexican, October 29th, 2014 Schools across the country are engaging in a new type of scaffolded approach to mathematics – Close Math. Every student must carefully read a math problem the day before or in class, pencil in hand. After discussing the problem in detail during a short seminar – being careful to use the pencil to annotate and adjust algebraic language…